The Becoming - a novella (12 page)

Now the two were
trading barbs like partners and friends, despite the fact Dupont had been on
the job just six months and McMahon brought fifteen years of law enforcement
experience to Paskagankee, all of it on a busy metropolitan police force.

A light-falling
mist drizzled around the cruiser as the two sat in the otherwise empty parking
lot of the town’s only funeral home, using a hand-held radar gun to clock cars
passing by on Route 14. The effort was mostly for show, an attempt to
discourage townspeople from speeding rather than actually to ticket drivers.

Mike prepared to
wave what was left of his sandwich in Officer Dupont’s face again, just to
enjoy her reaction, when a muddy, faded maroon Ford pickup flashed by, at least
fifteen years old, losing the battle to rust and traveling a good twenty-five
miles per hour over the posted speed limit of forty-five. The truck roared
through a massive puddle, kicking up an impressive rooster tail of spray and
fishtailing momentarily before regaining traction on the wet pavement and
continuing along the road. The driver was clearly in a hurry and had not
noticed the police cruiser, despite the fact it was parked in the middle of an
otherwise empty lot.

Dupont looked a
question at Mike, her short black hair framing her face in a very appealing
way. “Go get him,” he said, nodding, and she hit the gas, pulling smoothly out
of the lot and overtaking the pickup within a quarter-mile, an impressive feat
considering the truck’s speed.

She hit her blues
and the driver of the pickup traveled another several hundred feet before
apparently noticing the cruiser and pulling to the side of the road without
benefit of a turn signal. Sharon eased up behind the truck and prepared to step
into the falling drizzle. Mike asked, “You want some help?”

“Nah,” she
replied. “No sense in us both getting soaked.”

“Good answer.
You’ve really got a future in my department.” He grinned as she whacked him on
the arm with her hat and climbed out of the cruiser. He admired her slim form
as she walked away—she looked good even in the unflattering blue uniform blouse
and dark grey slacks of the Paskagankee Police Department.

Officer Dupont
approached the battered pickup truck and Mike was unsurprised to see the
occupant hand his license and registration through the window immediately upon
her arrival at the door. It was obvious he had fished the required documents
out of his wallet and glove compartment while they had had their brief
conversation inside the cruiser.

“Had a little
experience at this, have you?” Mike muttered to himself and then sat up
straight in his seat as the driver’s side door of the truck opened abruptly and
a man stepped unsteadily to the pavement. His first instinct was to rush to the
rookie’s defense, but he forced himself to wait and watch, to stay in the
cruiser and see how she would react. Had he not been riding shotgun to learn
the ins and outs of this small town, she would have been patrolling this remote
stretch of road alone, best to let her handle the incident by herself.

Standard
department procedure dictated that the officer instruct the driver to wait in
his vehicle while she returned to her cruiser to check for outstanding
warrants. Mike was certain she had done just that as she approached the truck,
so the man’s exiting the vehicle in spite of that warning constituted an
aggressive action and cause for concern.

Mike’s concern
turned to amusement, though, as the obviously drunk driver proved no match for
Officer Dupont, despite his being at least eight inches taller and probably
close to one hundred pounds heavier than she was. No sooner had his feet
splashed down on the wet pavement than she grabbed him by the wrist, forcing
his hand backward and using the resulting leverage to spin him around and slam
him face first into the side of his truck. She kicked his feet apart and
quickly patted him down for weapons, then slapped cuffs on his wrists and
marched him to the rear of the cruiser, dumping him unceremoniously into the
back seat while he sputtered indignantly about police brutality.

As soon as the man
looked up through the cage separating the back seat from the front and saw
Mike, he stopped complaining and slurred, “Who’re you?”

“New police
chief,” Mike answered. “My name is Mike McMahon and I understand you have a
problem with my officer?”

“You’re damn right
I do! You saw her beat on me for no good goddamned reason, and I want to file a
complaint.”

“That’s certainly
your right,” Mike told him. “But you do understand I sat in this cruiser and
watched the entire little episode, and aside from the ease with which she
subdued you, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ll be happy to
testify to that in court if necessary.”

“But—”

“But nothing,”
Mike interrupted. “Did Officer Dupont instruct you to remain inside your
vehicle?”

“Well, yeah,” he
reluctantly admitted.

“And you stepped
out of your vehicle anyway?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then all I can
tell you is you’re lucky it wasn’t me out there because you’d be on your way to
the hospital right now, rather than to a warm, comfortable holding cell.”

The man slumped
back in his seat and shook his head petulantly, turning to look out the side
window as Sharon Dupont steered the cruiser off the side of the road and
accelerated back toward town. Mike winked at her and she smiled.

In the back seat,
the man suddenly found his second wind. “Hey, girlie, how’s your daddy?” he
taunted.

Mike glanced at
Sharon and held his tongue. Her face reddened, and she stared steadfastly
through the windshield as she drove, ignoring their passenger.

“I said, how’s
your daddy?” he repeated in a louder voice as if perhaps she had not heard him,
despite the fact it should have been obvious she had, even to a drunken lout.

“He’s dead, Earl,
you know that. Now do yourself a favor and shut your mouth,” she said sharply.

“Your new
girlfriend tell you her daddy used to be one of my best drinking buddies?” This
time, Mike decided, the man in the back seat must be addressing him. “Or at
least he was before the pretty little thing sitting next to you replaced him.
‘Course, I s’pose it goes without sayin’ that he don’t come around too much no
more. You know, what with his being dead and all. Ain’t that right, baby doll?”
His voice resumed its taunting tone as he again addressed Sharon Dupont.

Mike glanced
sideways at his officer and saw a hard set to her jaw. She was grinding her
teeth and a vein throbbed in her forehead, and she looked like she might
explode at any moment.

Mike decided
enough was enough. For whatever reason, this drunken idiot was getting to the
young officer, and it was time to put a stop to it. “Hey dumbass, open your
mouth one more time,” he said, turning in his seat and staring down the man in
back, “and we’ll add assaulting a peace officer to the drunk-driving charge.
You mull that over in your tiny little brain, but remember, just one more word
and you’re going to be sorry you ever opened your toothless mouth. That’s a
promise.”

The drunk’s mouth
dropped open comically but the remainder of the fifteen minute ride to the
police station passed in silence. The pair brought the man into the station and
deposited him into holding. Mike sipped a coffee while Officer Dupont processed
the drunk-driving suspect. One thing common to police stations everywhere, he
mused, was the consistently bad coffee. It was as if the worst coffeemakers in
the world were reserved for the cops, to be filled with the stalest coffee and
brewed with the nastiest water.

As he considered
the feasibility of buying a brand-new coffeemaker and some fresh coffee with
his own money in a gesture of mercy to his new employees, Sharon Dupont’s
shapely form rounded the corner. She smiled tightly. “He’s a barrel of laughs,
isn’t he?”

“Aren’t they all,”
Mike replied, choking down the last of the bitter brew and following his
temporary partner out of the station and back to their cruiser.

3

The drizzle turned to freezing rain
and began falling more steadily as George Hooper crossed the uneven muddy track
and approached the log cabin. The temperature seemed to have grown noticeably
colder during the time he spent studying the granite foundations scattered
around the deserted village. It stood to reason, though. George wasn’t sure how
long he had been standing motionless in the cold rain, but he knew it had been
a while.

For some
irrational reason, he was having trouble forcing himself to complete the short
walk to the cabin to ask for help. The sense of dread and foreboding, which had
begun gnawing at him almost the moment he stumbled into this clearing, had
grown rapidly until it threatened to freeze him—literally—where he stood.

“Just do it, you
freakin’ wimp,” George muttered to himself. His voice sounded somehow foreign
and his breath crystallized in the chilly air, swirling into the rain and
disappearing. He reluctantly resumed trudging through the mud and weeds, the
footing becoming more treacherous. The ground crunched under his boots and
George realized for the first time he was shivering violently.
How the hell
long have I been standing out here?

The entire area
seemed deserted but George felt certain it was not. Someone had started a fire
inside that cabin, and George was positive no one had left while he was
standing out here.
Oh really? Are you sure about that? You were zoned out; you
don’t have the slightest clue how long you’ve been staring at those gigantic
granite blocks, now, do you?

The feeling of
dread mushroomed, worming its way through George’s intestines and growing in
inverse proportion to his distance from the cabin. Finally he reached the front
porch, and as he mounted the steps, the panic exploded, threatening to
overwhelm him. He looked frantically from window to window, certain someone (
something
)
was staring out at him, waiting and biding his (
its
) time until George wandered
close enough to launch an attack.

No one was visible
in any of the windows; George could see that quite clearly because the glass in
all of them had been cleaned to a smudge-free shine, and the rooms inside were
as empty and vacant as the eyes of a zombie, a shambling undead monster intent
on cracking his skull open like a coconut and devouring his brain.

Where in the
hell did THAT come from? When have you ever watched zombie movies?

George’s hands
were shaking violently, and he knew it was not just from the lousy weather
conditions. There was something evil about this place, he could sense it.
Sense
it, hell, I can almost
taste
it.
There was no point in kidding
himself. He wanted desperately to leave, to run somewhere, anywhere, to get out
of this cursed place while he still could, but he had no choice but to
continue. If he turned around now he would freeze to death, his soaking wet
clothes stealing his body heat and inviting hypothermia.

A couple of loose
floorboards in the porch creaked and groaned as George worked his way
hesitantly to the closed front door. He thought it odd that the otherwise
immaculate and solidly constructed log cabin would have loose floorboards for
him to trip over. Had it been built that way on purpose?

George thought the
only way things could get any worse at this point would be to fall through the
porch on one of those loose planks and break an ankle. That would leave him at
the mercy of the malevolent force stalking him.
Stalking and preparing to
attack— watching with red-rimmed eyes and stinking dead breath redolent of
rotting flesh, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to rip your throat
out
.

After what felt
like an eternity George reached the front door. His movements were becoming
slower, clumsier, a sure sign of the onset of hypothermia; it was imperative
that he shed his wet clothing and begin to raise his body’s core temperature.

The cabin door
stood before him and still George could not shake his conviction that something
evil was lurking on the other side, inches away. It was listening intently,
just as he was, separated from him by nothing more than a slab of oak with
hinges on one side and a shiny brass knob on the other.

George raised one
gloved hand and banged on the heavy wooden door and was surprised to see it
swing slowly open. It creaked loudly, as if only reluctantly complying with the
laws of physics. The noise sounded eerily like a scream. George was certain
that when he had examined the house from a distance the front door had been
tightly closed. Or had it? His mind seemed to be working just as slowly and
clumsily as his body. Maybe he only thought the door had been closed; maybe he
had never really even checked at all; it was so hard to remember, so hard to
think.

He eased his head
warily through the partially open door. “Hello?” His voice sounded fearful and
hesitant, even to him. Clearing his throat and putting a little more conviction
into it, George tried again. “Hello, is anybody in here? I got lost hunting and
I could use some directions . . .”

By the time he
finished speaking, George’s voice had diminished until it was barely more than
a whisper. If the cabin’s owner was here, he clearly did not wish to reveal
himself.

George took a few
hesitant steps into the house, finding himself in a large open room, a
combination kitchen/living area with a short hallway branching off to the left.
The hallway featured three doors placed side by side, presumably opening onto a
bathroom and maybe a couple of bedrooms. The entire home appeared empty now, but
it was plain it hadn’t been for long. To George’s right, a massive fieldstone
fireplace took up most of the side wall, and inside the fireplace red-hot ashes
still glowed, the flames only recently having been extinguished.